wouldn't have happened to someone a little less open to such
things, but it was happening. And as he stared at the painting he
found himself remembering the little sign on Judy Diment's card
table. ALL SALES CASH, it had said (although she had taken his
check, only adding his driver's license ID number for safety's
sake). And it had said something else, too.
ALL SALES FINAL.
Kinnell walked past the picture and into the living room. He felt
like a stranger inside his own body, and he sensed part of his mind
groping for the trowel he had used earlier. He seemed to have
misplaced it.
He turned on the TV, then the Toshiba satellite tuner which sat on
top of it. He turned to V-14, and all the time he could feel the
picture out there in the hall, pushing at the back of his head. The
picture that had somehow beaten him here.
'Must have known a shortcut,' Kinnell said, and laughed.
He hadn't been able to see much of the blond in this version of the
picture, but there had been a blur behind the wheel which Kinnell
assumed had been him. The Road Virus had finished his business
in Rosewood. It was time to move north. Next stop
He brought a heavy steel door down on that thought, cutting it off
before he could see all of it. 'After all, I could still be imagining all
this,' he told the empty living room. Instead of comforting him, the
hoarse, shaky quality of his voice frightened him even more. 'This
could be ... But he couldn't finish. All that came to him was an old
song, belted out in the pseudo-hip style of some early '50s Sinatra
done: This could be the start of something BIG ...
The tune oozing from the TV's stereo speakers wasn't Sinatra but
Paul Simon, arranged for strings. The white computer type on the
blue screen said WELCOME TO NEW ENGLAND NEWSWIRE.
There were ordering instructions below this, but Kinnell didn't
have to read them; he was a Newswire junkie and knew the drill by
heart. He dialed, punched in his Mastercard number, then 508.
'You have ordered Newswire for [slight pause] central and
northem Massachusetts,' the robot voice said. 'Thank you very m-
-'
Kinnell dropped the phone back into the cradle and stood looking
at the New England Newswire logo, snapping his fingers
nervously. 'Come on,' he said. 'Come on, come on.'
The screen flickered then, and the blue background became green.
Words began scrolling up, something about a house fire in
Taunton. This was followed by the latest on a dog-racing scandal,
then tonight's weather - clear and mild. Kinnell was starting to
relax, starting to wonder if he'd really seen what he thought he'd
seen on the entryway wall or if it had been a bit of travel-induced
fugue, when the TV beeped shrilly and the words BREAKING
NEWS appeared. He stood watching the caps scroll up.
NENphAUG19/8:40P A ROSEWOOD WOMAN HAS BEEN
BRUTALLY MURDER-ED WHILE DOING A FAVOR FOR AN
ABSENT FRIEND. 38-YEAR-OLD JUDITH DIMENT WAS
